Lucien Seevagen (1887-1959) Small Breton Port, Bréhat, Paimpol...brittany, Pont-aven, Goulden...

A very pretty oil on canvas board by Lucien Seevagne depicting a small port in northern Brittany, signed lower right + old labels on the back, including one from a previous exhibition in Rouen... Canvas dimensions: 24.5 x 41 cm, 35 x 52 cm including the frame. This is indeed a very pretty post-Impressionist composition by Lucien Seevagne, who, as is his wont, painted a small Breton port, most likely in the Côtes-d'Armor department. I don't know the area well enough to pinpoint it, but it's certainly somewhere between Bréhat, Paimpol, Ploumanac'h, Perros-Guirec, etc. I trust the experts to identify it. As is his custom, Seevagne uses his usual brushstrokes and palette of grays, blues, browns, and ochres, with touches of green and red. As a true adopted Breton, Seevagne understands and perfectly captures the very specific Breton light, which will earn him... He received all the honors and enjoyed great success. He is among the great artists who frequented the island of Bréhat and its surroundings, such as Osterlind, Goulden, Kickert, Sabbagh, etc. Lucien Seevagen, born on January 28, 1887, in Chaumont (Haute-Marne) and died on June 24, 1959, on the Île-de-Bréhat, was a French painter who notably painted numerous works depicting the Bréhat archipelago, but also the Morvan, Provence, and Corsica. Lucien Seevagen trained at the École des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, then in the studio of Eugène Charvot. His talent was first exercised in the field of etching before fully blossoming in painting. From 1907, he exhibited at the Salon des Artistes Français, then at the Salon des Indépendants and the Salon d'Automne. During the 1910s, his style clearly favored the application of flat areas of color and the use of outlines, thus indicating his assimilation of the pictorial models developed a few years earlier in Pont-Aven. The Marcel-Bernheim Gallery frequently exhibited his works at 18 Avenue Matignon, notably in January 1920—an exhibition that was accompanied by a catalogue. Lucien Seevagen arrived on the Île de Bréhat to convalesce after the First World War, where he had been gassed. In 1920, while maintaining a studio in Montparnasse at 242 Boulevard Raspail, the painter and his wife settled permanently in Brittany. His studio, located above Kerpont, offered him one of the most beautiful views of the Île de Bréhat. In 1921, Seevagen gained recognition across the Atlantic, with his work being acquired by five museums: a landscape of Nice entered the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, another, a Market in Nice, went to the Indianapolis Museum of Art, a Port of Nice to the French Institute in New York, a still life to the Brooklyn Museum, and a Parisian landscape to the Pennsylvania Museum in Philadelphia. Along with Émile Aubry, André Devambez, Émile Jourdan, and Paul-Albert Laurens, he participated in the first group exhibition of French painters in Canada in 1924, under the patronage of the Quebec government. In 1923, Seevagen exhibited at the Salon de la Nationale. The Georges Petit Gallery exhibited his work in Paris in April 1924, and the Druet Gallery did the same in 1927. In 1929, he painted the portrait of his neighbor from Bréhat, the sculptor André Vermare, winner of the Prix de Rome for sculpture. The Bernheim-Jeune Gallery included Seevagen in a group exhibition in July 1930. That same year, the French State purchased his painting "Mill at Sea on the Island of Bréhat," created eight years earlier, and donated it to the National Museum of Modern Art in 1931. In January 1932, the magazine "Art et Décoration" held the first retrospective of his work. His submission to the Salon d'Automne in 1934 was also noteworthy. In 1935, the Barreiro Gallery in Paris exhibited his work and published a catalogue. That same year, the newspaper "Le Temps" praised Seevagen's landscape exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants. Between 1936 and 1940, the French State acquired seven of the painter's works. In 1938, the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris acquired, among other works, "Sémaphore à Bréhat," an oil on canvas. In the aftermath of the war, the Helleu-Pelletan gallery in Paris exhibited the "masters of Brittany," including Lucien Seevagen, Maurice Denis, Lucien Simon, Paul Sérusier, and Emmanuel Le Ray. Suffering from illness since 1958, the painter died on June 25, 1959, in Bréhat.